Mayer’s conference address, preserved as an unrevised stenographic contribution to the Vienna proceedings, introduces a debate on tax shifting. Since his prepared remarks overlap with the preceding report, he offers complementary questions rather than another systematic exposition. His central problem is the gap between agreement on the abstract mechanism of shifting and dependable guidance for tax legislation.
Mayer regards supply-and-demand elasticity and economic power as equivalent explanations, provided power denotes the capacity to influence prices in one’s favour:
Diese beiden Formeln, es komme auf die wirtschaftliche Macht an für die Frage der Überwälzung, oder die andere Formel, es komme auf die Elastizität der Angebot- und Nachfragekurve an, decken sich ihrem Inhalte nach.
English translation: These two formulas — that for the question of shifting what matters is economic power, or the other formula, that what matters is the elasticity of the supply and demand curves — coincide in their content.
Tax-shifting theory thus becomes an application of price theory. Mayer stresses the convergence of its general conclusions:
Das Resultat dieser neuesten Forschungen ist in den abstraktesten Fragen übereinstimmend.
English translation: The result of these most recent investigations is concordant in the most abstract questions.
Yet agreement about mechanisms does not determine whether particular taxes will actually be shifted. Circumstances vary too widely for abstract propositions to dictate legislative choices:
Daher fehlt es an einem unmittelbaren Übergang, an einer Möglichkeit der Fruktifizierung der abstrakten Erkenntnisse für die Praxis.
English translation: Hence there is lacking an immediate transition, a possibility of making the abstract findings fruitful for practice.
The address seeks intermediate, typical circumstances that can bridge this divide. Mayer distinguishes the possibility of shifting from its actual occurrence or economic necessity. Against the proposition that every tax is in principle shiftable, he identifies cases in which incidence can be predicted with greater confidence.
Pure differential rent provides the first case. Agricultural prices reflect the costs of marginal producers whose output is required to meet effective demand. Better-positioned producers receive a surplus without determining those prices. A tax confined to that surplus therefore supplies no basis for raising product prices and must be borne by the landowner. Mayer distinguishes this immediate incidence from subsequent capitalization into a lower sale price. He extends the argument to industrial differential rents, while recognizing the relevance of capital composition and supply rigidity. The assessment must genuinely isolate pure rent.
Inheritance, estate, and gift taxes bring taxpayer motivation into the analysis. Market opportunities alone cannot explain shifting: one must also ask why taxpayers attempt it. Mayer emphasizes the desire to preserve accustomed income and living standards. A tax on newly acquired wealth reduces an increment rather than an established standard, weakening the motive to shift it. He initially presents non-shifting as highly probable, though his concluding synthesis is more categorical. Such taxes appeal to him both because their intended incidence is likely to persist and because they advance social-policy objectives.
Pure monopoly rent supplies another case grounded in price formation. A monopolist already charging the profit-maximizing price cannot recover a proportional or progressive tax on net earnings through a further price increase without reducing net profit. Taxes on gross receipts or quantities sold do not have the same effect. Consequently, assessment technique is integral to incidence: identifying the tax object is insufficient unless the method distinguishes net profit from turnover or gross return. Mayer considers this increasingly important as monopolistic organizations expand.
The final extended discussion challenges the claim that a general income tax is inherently equitable. Mayer acknowledges the weakness of empirical evidence: observed price movements cannot readily be disentangled from changes in production, consumption, trade, and economic conditions. Incidence analysis consequently remains largely deductive. His substantive criticism concerns the abstraction involved in defining income simply as a fund accruing to a person. That definition obscures productive sources through which taxpayers may shift burdens by reducing wages or material costs, or increasing output prices. Uniform formal assessment therefore cannot guarantee equitable final incidence.
Mayer concludes that a tax system should combine taxes whose shifting is predictable with taxes unlikely or unable to be shifted. Against the privileged position of general income taxation in Germany and Austria, he advocates improved taxation of net source returns, special rent taxes, and a supplementary income tax above a threshold, drawing especially on the English model. The address connects price theory, taxpayer motivation, and assessment design: fiscal justice depends on the economic transmission of taxation, not merely on the identity of its statutory payer.
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